Divinity School (video)

Scholars from The Enhancing Life Project, a joint venture of the University of Chicago and Ruhr University Bochum / Germany, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, discuss the public relevance of their research, in the vibrant city of Berlin as well as the beautiful setting of Liebenberg Castle outside Berlin, at their 2016 summer residency seminar.

Dean and Associate Professor of Religion, Literature and Visual Culture, Rosengarten pursues interests in genres of narrative (especially the novel), in hermeneutics, literary theory, and aesthetics, and in the development of religious thought through the "long" eighteenth century. His book Henry Fielding and the Narration of Providence: Divine Design and the Incursions of Evil locates Fielding's novels in the contexts of the debates about poetic justice in the drama, and the deism controversy's discussions of natural religion toward the claim that the eighteenth-century English novel engages broader theological questions about the security of classic notions of providential intervention in a post-Newtonian universe. He is completing a book on Roman Catholicism between the Vatican Councils under the title Styles of Catholicism: Flannery O'Connor, Frida Kahlo, Simone Weil, and plans to undertake a study of satire as a mode of apophatic language from Rabelais to Swift. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

Ms. Arnold, a television producer, suffered a rare but often fatal condition called an amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) during the birth of her second child. She died on the operating table. Her multi-award-winning, best-selling book on her experience, 37 Seconds, tells her story. She serves on the board of directors for the AFE Foundation, speaks on patient advocacy and served as the face for the legislative campaign When Seconds Count (ASA) and also for the mother’s day LifeSource program, helping to educate about blood donation. In addition she raises money for research and education into the leading cause of maternal death in the world. She will speak with us about her experiences before – during – and after death.

Professor of the History of South Asia at the University of London, Francis Robinson (Trinity College, Cambridge PhD, 1970), is one of the most prominent and influential voices among Western scholars of Muslim history and Islam in India. His research on Islam and Muslim history in South Asia focuses on Muslim responses to modernity, learned and holy families and their textual traditions, and religious and political change. His interest in the Muslim world, however, is not confined to the Indian subcontinent, but spans a much wider geographical region and discursive landscape. The Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative is a three-year project, designed to support the expansion and enhancement of the study of Islam at the University of Chicago. Administered by the Divinity School, the initiative is a cross-divisional collaboration, intended to create a sustained campus conversation about the future of Islamic studies. Funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative brings to the University distinguished visiting scholars representing a wide range of topics in Islamic Studies, resulting in a substantive, sustained discussion about both specific topics in Islamic studies and the wider field of study.

The Office of Sustainability works with campus and community partners to enhance a culture of sustainability using a data-driven, yet relationship-based approach that strives to connect students, faculty and staff into a cohesive University-wide network. Their philosophy: to achieve balance between environmental, social and economic sustainability in all decisions. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

Studying Religion in Iran: Between University and Seminary Iran is well-known for its centuries-old centers of Islamic scholarship where students from all over the world learn jurisprudence, sciences of hadith transmission, Qur'anic exegesis, theology, and philosophy. It is less commonly known that academic scholarship on religion has also been burgeoning outside the direct sphere of the hawzah (seminary) system. Join us for a conversation with visiting scholars from the University of Religions and Denominations in Qom who will discuss the philosophies, methods, and approaches these different institutions have adopted - not only in the study of Islam, but more broadly in comparative scholarship on religion. Dr. Naeimeh Pourmohammadi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Religions and Denominations. Dr. Fatima Tofighi is Assistant Professor of Women and Religion at the University of Religions and Denominations. Mahdi Salehi is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Theology and Director of International Relations and Cooperation at the University of Religions and Denominations. Alireza Doostdar, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion, will moderate the discussion. The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy.

For early-career and established faculty alike, a course in "World Religions" or the like can present a substantial pedagogical challenge. Often an inherited course rotating between faculty members, "World Religions" risks becoming a professor's nightmare: it presents to students an opportunity for global exposure to religious ideas, practices, and problems, seeming to be an all-in-one package; yet for the teacher, such a demand for coverage can seem to necessitate either a superhuman level of mastery or a subpar level of depth. Such a course, therefore, requires a different kind of pedagogical hand and a number of tough choices. At this panel workshop, area faculty with experience in the challenges of teaching "World Religions" (and analogous formulations) will help to bring clarity, flexibility, and confidence to a staple course in much of the field of religious studies. Panelists: Dov Weiss, Assistant Professor of Religion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Catherine Benton, Associate Professor of Religion & Asian Studies, Lake Forest College James Halstead, Associate Professor of Religion, DePaul University Dov Weiss is currently an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed his PhD at the University of Chicago Divinity School as a Martin Meyer Fellow in 2011 and was the Alan M. Stroock Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies in 2012. Catherine Benton has taught courses in Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese religious traditions, and Islam at Lake Forest College, where she has chaired programs in Islamic World Studies, Asian Studies, and Religion. She has worked in India over the last thirty years studying religious rituals in communities in Maharashtra, directing study abroad programs, and, earlier in her career, working as a field officer for UNICEF in south India. James Halstead, OSA, has taught “Religious Worlds in Comparative Perspective” in the liberals studies program and “Religious Worlds and Ethical Perspectives” in DePaul’s Honors Program for 28 years. For twelve of those years he was also chair of the Department for Religious Studies, observing others teach the introductory course in religion. The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy.

The quarterly Dean's Craft of Teaching Seminar is the flagship seminar of the Craft of Teaching program, centered on issues of course design and institutional context. Abstract: The humanities, scholars and educators continue to sense, are increasingly associated on college campuses with pre-professional requirements, a warm-up act to the real task of preparing students for a range of existing and tightly specified careers. The data suggest that the curricular presence of the humanities (core courses; gen-ed requirements; concentrations or majors) is being accordingly and considerably reduced. Yet it may be suggested -- not without controversy -- that preparation in the humanities serves not only its own edifying ends but also the formation of sensibilities and skills without which the professions are severely impoverished. In light of these problems, Prof. Peter Kaufman (Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond) reinvented himself at the age of 63, leaving an R1 where he taught undergraduate courses in the history of Christianity and graduate courses in religious studies (from late antiquity to early modern Europe) to engage the issues represented in the materials included for this seminar, and to continue developing what could be called an extra-curricular avocation to promote the indispensability of the humanities to the practice of leadership in our changing society. This seminar confronts the formidable challenges facing the profession, in order to consider the role that Swift Hall graduates have the opportunity to play in stewarding the future of the humanities. Peter Iver Kaufman (PhD, 1975) is the 2016 Divinity School Alumnus of the Year. He studies the political cultures of late antique, medieval, and early modern Europe and North Africa. He has written nine books and more than 40 articles on authority, religious conflict, and literary history, which have appeared in, among other journals, Leadership and the Humanities, Journal of Late Antiquity, Harvard Theological Review, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, and Journal of the American Academy of Religion. He is editor-in-chief of Religions and editor of a series of monographs on the religion around iconic figures from Dante and Dürer to Virginia Woolf, Billie Holiday, and Bob Dylan. He has also edited five books, ranging from studies of charisma to others on leadership and Elizabethan culture. The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy.

Marty Center Senior Fellow Symposium 2015-2016 by Nancy Frankenberry "Believing Scientists in America: Trials and Tribulations of Theistic Evolution." Nancy Frankenberry is John Phillips Professor in Religion Emerita at Dartmouth College where she taught courses in philosophy of religion; women and gender studies and religion; and science and religion. Her research and writing have attempted to span all three areas. She is the author or editor/co-editor of five books, as well as over sixty scholarly articles, book chapters, and critical reviews. Most recently, she has completed a series of five papers in the general area of religious epistemology. With the completion of a book-manuscript tentatively titled “Pragmatism and the End of Religion,” she expects to wrap up her work in philosophy of religion While a senior fellow at the Martin Marty Center Prof. Frankenberry turns to issues facing the wider public in connection with science and religion debates. Her new project, “Great Issues in Religion and Evolution,” investigates the intellectual challenge of Darwinism and evolutionary biology to religious belief and practice in the USA for the last 150 years.

David Travis (AB'71), Author, Curator, and former Chair of the Department of Photography of the The Art Institute of Chicago, speaking. A specialist in the modernist period, he has organized a number of significant shows and contributed scholarly essays to their catalogs, including Starting With Atget: Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection (1977), Photography Rediscovered: American Photographs 1900-1930 (1979), André Kertész: Of Paris and New York (1985), On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography (1989), Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel (2001), Taken By Design: Photography from the Institute of Design 1937-1971 (2002),Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes (2008), and most recently Karsh: Beyond the Camera (2012). He has organized and presented more than 125 exhibitions of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and has also been active as a guest curator for other major museums. His exhibitions have been shown at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art in Osaka, the Museo degli Innocenti (Florence), and for the Patrimoine photographique of the French Ministry of Culture, which inducted him as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1987. In December of 2002, he was named a “Chicagoan of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune Arts critics. A book of his lectures and essays was issued in 2003 by David R. Godine Publisher under the title: At the Edge of the Light: Thoughts on Photographers and Photography, on Talent and Genius. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

Quarterly Deans Forum with Kevin Hector, Associate Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religions. Professor Hector's recent book, “The Theological Project of Modernism: Faith and the Conditions of Mineness” (Oxford University Press, 2015), explores the idea of 'mineness,' in the sense of being able to identify with one's life or experience it as self-expressive, by tracing the development of this idea in modern theology. Professors Michael Fishbane and Angie Heo offer responses. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

This multi-disciplinary symposium brings together leading scholars who will share their research and engage in conversation about the role of religion in addressing rising income inequality—an issue that impacts millions of people. During the 1960s and 1970s, 9-10% of total income went to the top one-percent of Americans. By 2007, this share had risen to 23.5%. Even before 2008 and the so-called Great Recession, the wages of the average worker in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, had been stagnant for three decades. How are the religions contributing to the complex mix of factors responsible for this state of affairs? Part 5 includes an audio-only recording of the panel discussion amongst participants. Dwight N. Hopkins, Professor of Theology (Moderator) University of Chicago Divinity School Evelyn Z. Brodkin, Associate Professor and Director of the Poverty and Inequality Program University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration Paola Sapienza, Donald C. Clark/HSBC Chair in Consumer Finance Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics University of Chicago Divinity School Amir Sufi, Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy University of Chicago Booth School of Business Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance University of Chicago Booth School of Business Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

"Building the Religion Major in the Era of the 'Death of the Humanities'" This seminar will discuss the challenges of attracting students to the Religion Major in the contemporary climate. As students are inundated with talk of career preparation and are told over and over again that humanities majors only get jobs at coffee shops, departments worry about declining enrollments, consolidation, and justifying their programs to administrators, trustees, and even their faculty colleagues. Prof. Meira Kensky (PhD 2009; Associate Professor of Religion, Coe College) will talk about some of the strategies her department has employed in building a rigorous and flexible curriculum, recruiting and developing talented students, and acting as ambassadors to the college community at large for both the study of Religion and the Humanities in general. The quarterly Dean's Craft of Teaching Seminar is the flagship seminar of the Craft of Teaching program, centered on issues of course design and institutional context. Meira Z. Kensky is currently the Joseph E. McCabe Associate Professor of Religion. Kensky received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (New Testament) from the University of Chicago. Her first book, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature, was published by Mohr Siebeck in 2010, and was the inspiration for a conference on "The Divine Courtroom in Comparative Perspective" at Cordozo School of Law in New York. Currently, she is working on her second book for Mohr Siebeck, an examination of the figure of Timothy in Early Christian literature. Recent publications include articles on Romans 9-11, Tertullian of Carthage's Apologeticum, and the figure of Timothy in the Pauline and post-Pauline epistles. Kensky has lectured widely around the Chicago and Cedar Rapids areas, and gave the 29th Annual Stone Lectureship in Judaism at Augustana College, IL, last May. She was the recipient of Coe College's C. J. Lynch Outstanding Teacher Award in 2013. The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy

Professor Peter Gregory, the Jill Ker Conway of Professor Emeritus of Religion and East Asian Studies of Smith College, will present a public lecture on "Bridging the Gap: Zongmi’s Strategies for Reconciling Textual Study and Meditative Practice." Abstract: There is a long-standing and deep-rooted tension between what could be characterized as meditative practice and textual study that runs through the Buddhist tradition. It emerges with the early com¬munities, is manifested in different forms throughout the history of the tradition, and is very much alive today. This lecture will examine some of the ways in which this tension plays out in Zongmi’s most ambitious, original, and systematically articulated work, “The General Preface to the Collected Writings on the Source of Chan” (禪源諸詮集都序), written in 833. This work is most famous for its multifaceted attempt to reconcile the doctrinal teachings of the different “philosophical” schools (such as Huayan) with the different traditions of Chan prevalent in his day. The lecture will interrogate this issue by offering a close reading of a critical passage at the beginning of the Preface, where Zongmi lays out his main, overarching reason for composing the text. This passage is of special interest because in it Zongmi gives an account of what might be called an “enlightenment experience” that he had, which provides the basis on which he claims unique authority to be able to resolve the central problem that the text addresses: to bridge the gap between textualists and meditators so as to make the tradition whole again.

John Cottingham delivers a public lecture, entitled "Transcending science: humane models of religious understanding." John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow, Heythrop College, University of London, and Honorary Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford and former editor of Ratio: the International Journal of Analytic Philosophy (1993-2013). Prof. Cottingham is a world-renowned Descartes scholar who has has published extensively on issues in Early Modern Philosophy and Moral Philosophy. In recent years Cottingham has focused on the Philosophy of Religions with celebrated monographs on the nature, justification, and transformative power of religious devotion, including “Why Believe?” (Continuum, 2009) and “How to Believe” (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016). His books also include “Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics” (Cambridge, 1998); On the Meaning of Life (Routledge, 2003); “The Spiritual Dimension” (Cambridge, 2005); “Cartesian Reflections” (Oxford, 2008), and “Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane Approach”(Cambridge, 2014). Abstract: In many contemporary debates religion and science are cast as rivals, supposedly offering competing explanations of the origins and nature of the cosmos. Religion often appears at a disadvantage here: given the magnificent achievements of science in uncovering the workings of nature, theistic speculations about the activities of a supposed immaterial divine agent are apt to seem radically impoverished by comparison. This paper will argue that we need a more ‘humane’ model of religious understanding, one that is responsive to the actual role played by religion in the life of the believer. Understanding the world religiously is less about subscribing to explanatory hypotheses than about a certain mode of engagement with reality, requiring a moral and spiritual transformation of the subject. This has crucial implications for the appropriate way to philosophize about religion. Instead of an ‘epistemology of control’, based on the detached evaluation of evidence, we may need to substitute an ‘epistemology of receptivity’. In religion, as in many areas of human life, authentic understanding may require a process of attunement in order for the relevant evidence to become manifest. This lecture is cosponsored by the Office of the Dean and the Philosophy of Religions Workshop.

Peter Iver Kaufman, (MA 1973, PhD 1975, History of Christianity), is the Divinity School’s 2016 Alumnus of the Year, will deliver the lecture. His lecture is entitled “Giorgio Agamben, Meet Augustine (With an Extended Introduction to Augustine’s Statesmen)” Kaufman is George Matthews and Virginia Brinkley Modlin Professor of Leadership Studies in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, a position he has held since 2008. Previously he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is Professor Emeritus. Dr. Kaufman’s scholarly work focuses on the political cultures of late antique, medieval, and early modern Europe and North Africa; he teaches leadership studies courses as well as advanced courses on political, cultural and religious leaders in late antiquity and early modern Europe.

Trina Janiec Jones (Wofford College) had her dissertation colloquium in Swift Hall on September 12th, 2001. The events of the previous day not only impacted her colloquium, but eventually, also took her teaching career and scholarly interests in directions she never imagined while sitting in Regenstein working her way through Sanskrit declensions. Trained in Buddhist philosophy at the Divinity School, she soon found that every job for which she interviewed required that she create a course on Islam. Since her graduation from the Divinity School, she has taught at two liberal arts colleges, teaching courses that have required her to become more of a generalist than she anticipated. This seminar focused on an undergraduate course on interfaith engagement and religious pluralism that she recently co-taught, and used its syllabus as an entry point into broader questions related to the role of the teacher in the undergraduate religious studies classroom. How, for example, does one negotiate students’ desires to explore “religion” or “spirituality” with one’s own pedagogical desire to foster an atmosphere of academic rigor and critical thinking? What, ultimately, should the goals of an undergraduate religious studies course be? The quarterly Dean's Craft of Teaching Seminar is the flagship seminar of the Craft of Teaching program, centered on issues of course design and institutional context. Katherine (Trina) Janiec Jones (AM, 1993; PhD, Philosophy of Religions, 2002) is an Associate Professor of Religion at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C., where she also serves as the Associate Provost for Curriculum and Co-Curriculum. She has won several teaching awards, served on a leadership team at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion (for a workshop for Pre-Tenure Religion Faculty and Colleges and Universities), and has consulted at several schools seeking to examine their introductory religious studies curricula (also through the Wabash Center). She was a recipient of an American Academy of Religion/Luce Foundation Fellowship in Theologies of Religious Pluralism and Comparative Theology and participated in a Seminar in Teaching Interfaith Understanding, sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Interfaith Youth Core. She is also a co-author of a rubric focused on pluralism and worldview engagement (https://www.ifyc.org/resources/plural...), the research for which was funded by the Teagle Foundation. The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy.

The University of Chicago Divinity School's Diploma, Hooding, and Awards Ceremony at the 527th Convocation was held at Bond Chapel.

This multi-disciplinary symposium brings together leading scholars who will share their research and engage in conversation about the role of religion in addressing rising income inequality—an issue that impacts millions of people. During the 1960s and 1970s, 9-10% of total income went to the top one-percent of Americans. By 2007, this share had risen to 23.5%. Even before 2008 and the so-called Great Recession, the wages of the average worker in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, had been stagnant for three decades. How are the religions contributing to the complex mix of factors responsible for this state of affairs? Part I includes the Introduction and a presentation by Evelyn Z. Brodkin, Associate Professor and Director of the Poverty and Inequality Program, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration Evelyn Z. Brodkin's research interests include welfare state politics and policies at the level of the state and the level of the street, with a focus on political-organizational responses to poverty, inequality, and marginalization. She is one of the leading scholars of street-level organizations, the agencies at the frontlines of public policy delivery. She has published widely in books and journals, including her recent book Work and the Welfare State: Street-Level Organizations and Workfare Politics (2013, co-edited with G. Marston). Her work has been recognized by the American Political Science Association (Herbert Kaufman Award), the American Public Administration Association (Burchfield Award), and the Open Society Institute, where she was named a Fellow. Brodkin has served on the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the board of directors of the Chicago Jobs Council. On leave this year, Brodkin is Moses Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hunter College. Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

This multi-disciplinary symposium brings together leading scholars who will share their research and engage in conversation about the role of religion in addressing rising income inequality—an issue that impacts millions of people. During the 1960s and 1970s, 9-10% of total income went to the top one-percent of Americans. By 2007, this share had risen to 23.5%. Even before 2008 and the so-called Great Recession, the wages of the average worker in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, had been stagnant for three decades. How are the religions contributing to the complex mix of factors responsible for this state of affairs? Part 4 includes a presentation by Luigi Zingales, the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business Luigi Zingales' research interests span from corporate governance to financial development, from political economy to the economic effects of culture. He co-developed the Financial Trust Index, which is designed to monitor the level of trust that Americans have toward their financial system. In addition to his position at Chicago Booth, Zingales is a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow for the Center for Economic Policy Research, and a fellow of the European Governance Institute. He also serves on the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, which has been examining the legislative, regulatory, and legal issues affecting how public companies function. In July 2015, he became the director of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago which he refocusing on promoting and diffusing research on regulatory capture and the various distortions that special interest groups impose on capitalism Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

This multi-disciplinary symposium brings together leading scholars who will share their research and engage in conversation about the role of religion in addressing rising income inequality—an issue that impacts millions of people. During the 1960s and 1970s, 9-10% of total income went to the top one-percent of Americans. By 2007, this share had risen to 23.5%. Even before 2008 and the so-called Great Recession, the wages of the average worker in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, had been stagnant for three decades. How are the religions contributing to the complex mix of factors responsible for this state of affairs? Part 3 includes a presentation by William Schweiker, the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics, the University of Chicago Divinity School. William Schweiker's research focuses on theological and ethical questions attentive to global dynamics, comparative religious ethics, the history of ethics, and hermeneutical philosophy. A frequent lecturer and visiting professor at universities around the world, he has been deeply involved in collaborative international scholarly projects. In addition to his position at the Divinity School, Schweiker is Director of The Enhancing Life Project, a two-year project dedicated to increasing knowledge in support of the aspiration by persons and communities for enriched lives. Schweiker's books include Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds (2004). He is also chief editor and contributor to A Companion to Religious Ethics (2004). He is working on a forthcoming book Religious Ethics: Meaning and Method and a second expanded edition of A Companion to Religious Ethics Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

This multi-disciplinary symposium brings together leading scholars who will share their research and engage in conversation about the role of religion in addressing rising income inequality—an issue that impacts millions of people. During the 1960s and 1970s, 9-10% of total income went to the top one-percent of Americans. By 2007, this share had risen to 23.5%. Even before 2008 and the so-called Great Recession, the wages of the average worker in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, had been stagnant for three decades. How are the religions contributing to the complex mix of factors responsible for this state of affairs? Part 2 includes a presentation by Amir Sufi, the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy University of Chicago Booth School of Business Amir Sufi's research focuses on finance and macroeconomics. In addition to his position at Chicago Booth, Sufi is also Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He has written articles published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His recent research on household debt and the economy has been profiled in the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. It has also been presented to policy-makers at the Federal Reserve, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors. He is the co-author, with Atif Mian, of House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again (2014 Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

Alain de Libéra is Professor of the History of Medieval Philosophy at the Collège de France, where his inaugural lecture was entitled Where Is Medieval Philosophy Headed? (Où va la philosophie médiévale? Leçon inaugurale prononcée le jeudi 13 février 2014). Prior to his election in 2012, he held the chair of the History of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Geneva. Among his earlier notable distinctions is his election in 1985 as research director of the Ve section (Sciences religieuses) of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he was in charge of the program Histoire des théologies chrétiennes dans l’Occident médiéval, formerly entitled Histoire des doctrines et des dogmes (Etienne Gilson), and later Histoire des théologies médiévales (Paul Vignaux and René Roques). Standing in a long and venerable tradition, Alain de Libéra has an impressive bibliography, as his publications range from studies on Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to works on Averroism and medieval Neoplatonism as well as on the Rhineland mystics, especially Eckhart. His most recent work involves a multivolume study on the subject: Archéologie du sujet, I, Naissance du sujet, Paris 2007; Archéologie du sujet, II, La Quête de l’identité, Paris 2008; Archéologie du sujet, III, L’Acte de Penser, I : La Double révolution, Paris 2014. Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy, the Philosophy of Religions workshop, the Theology and Ethics workshop, Medieval Studies Workshop, Lumen Christi Institute, and the France Chicago Center.

The Craft of Teaching and the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop. This workshop is intended to cultivate sensitivity and strategy in relation to the commitments of students and teachers, which come together in an inevitable but variable mixture specific to each classroom setting. Teaching effectively to and not only about diversity is a challenge that we will embrace. There will not be one solution but rather a palette of possibilities with which teachers may choose to proceed in light of their pedagogical contexts and goals. Our panel represents three different fields in three different institutional settings: -Prof. Laurie Zoloth (Northwestern University) is Professor of Religious Studies, Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Feinberg School of Medicine, and Director of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University’s Department of Religious Studies. She is co-chair of the American Academy of Religion's Section on women and Religion and a member of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, and she has been a member of the NASA National Advisory Council. -Prof. Valerie Johnson (DePaul University) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at DePaul University. Her research focuses on urban politics, African-American politics, and urban education. -Prof. Jonathan Ebel (U of I Urbana-Champaign) is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Department of Religion. His research program involves religion and war, religion and violence, lay theologies of economic hardship all within the American context. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School (PhD, 2004). The Craft of Teaching (CoT) is the Divinity School's program of pedagogical development for its graduate students, dedicated to preparing a new generation of accomplished educators in the field of religious studies. We bring together Divinity School faculty, current students, and an extensive alumni network of decorated teachers to share our craft and to advance critical reflection on religious studies pedagogy

Philosophy of Religions Workshops presents Jonardon Ganeri on “Why Philosophy Must Go Global” Jonardon Ganeri is Professor of Philosophy, NYU Abu Dhabi and Global Network Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Science, NYU. Abstract: The world of academic philosophy is now entering a new age, one defined neither by colonial need for recognition nor by postcolonial wish to integrate. The indicators of this new era include heightened appreciation of the value of world philosophies, the internationalization of the student body, the philosophical pluralism which interaction and migration in new global movements make salient, growing concerns about diversity within a still too-white faculty body and curricular canon, and identification of a range of deep structural problems with the contemporary philosophical academy in its discursive, citational, refereeing and ranking practices. We are entering what we might call “the age of re:emergence”, a new period the key features of which are as follows. First, philosophies from every region of the world, locally grounded in lived experience and reflection upon it, are finding new autonomous and authentic forms of articulation. Second, philosophical industry, leaving behind a center-periphery mode of production, is becoming again polycentric: the philosophical world is returning to a plural and diverse network of productive sites. Third, Europe and other colonial powers have been provincialized, no longer mandatory conversation partners or points of comparison but rather unprivileged participants in global dialogue. Fourth, philosophers within the largely anglophone international academy are beginning to acknowledge their responsibility so to arrange international institutions as to enable wide and open participation; that is, acknowledge that their control over the academy is a fall-out from colonialism rather than a reflection of intellectual superiority. We may thus look to a future when there will be a vibrant pluralistic realism in departments of academic philosophy around the globe, and a new cartography of philosophy.

Today’s lunch is this quarters’s Dean's Forum, which invites a faculty member to discuss one of his or her recent works, with formal response from several Divinity School colleagues. Today's forum features Heidegger’s Confessions: The Remains of Saint Augustine in Being and Time and Beyond (University of Chicago Press, 2015) by Ryan Coyne, Assistant Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Theology. Daniel A. Arnold, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Jean-Luc Marion, Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Theology will be offering responses. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

Alain de Libéra is Professor of the History of Medieval Philosophy at the Collège de France, where his inaugural lecture was entitled Where Is Medieval Philosophy Headed? (Où va la philosophie médiévale? Leçon inaugurale prononcée le jeudi 13 février 2014). Prior to his election in 2012, he held the chair of the History of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Geneva. Among his earlier notable distinctions is his election in 1985 as research director of the Ve section (Sciences religieuses) of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he was in charge of the program Histoire des théologies chrétiennes dans l’Occident médiéval, formerly entitled Histoire des doctrines et des dogmes (Etienne Gilson), and later Histoire des théologies médiévales (Paul Vignaux and René Roques). Standing in a long and venerable tradition, Alain de Libéra has an impressive bibliography, as his publications range from studies on Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to works on Averroism and medieval Neoplatonism as well as on the Rhineland mystics, especially Eckhart. His most recent work involves a multivolume study on the subject: Archéologie du sujet, I, Naissance du sujet, Paris 2007; Archéologie du sujet, II, La Quête de l’identité, Paris 2008; Archéologie du sujet, III, L’Acte de Penser, I : La Double révolution, Paris 2014. Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy, the Philosophy of Religions workshop, the Theology and Ethics workshop, Medieval Studies Workshop, Lumen Christi Institute, and the France Chicago Center.

Bettina Bergo is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal. Her project at the Marty Center, a monograph entitled Anxiety: History of a Concept in 19th and 20th Century Philosophy and Psychology, traces the intellectual history of anxiety, as an idea and a sign. Aimed at an interdisciplinary readership, the book is concerned with a recurrent theme in disciplines that framed the meaning of life, embodiment, subjectivity, and indeed, intersubjectivity. Abstract: even the so-called egalitarian and loosely structured societies known to anthropology, including hunters such as Inuit or Australian Aborigines, are in structure and practice subordinate segments of inclusive cosmic polities, ordered and governed by divinities, ancestors, species masters, and other such metapersons endowed with life and death powers over the human population. "The Mbowamb spends is whole life completely under the spell and in the company of spirits" (Vicedom and Tischner). "[Arawete] society is not complete on earth: the living are part of the global social structure founded on the alliance between heaven and earth" (Viveiros de Castro). We need something like a Copernican revolution in anthropological perspective: from human society as the center of a universe onto which it projects its own forms--that is to say, from the Durkheimian or structural-functional deceived wisdom--to the ethnographic realities of people's dependence on the encompassing life-giving and death-dealing powers, themselves of human attributes, which rule earthly order, welfare, and existence. For Hobbes notwithstanding, something like the political state is the condition of humanity in the state of nature; there are kingly beings in heaven even where there are no chiefs on earth.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Trina Janiec Jones (Wofford College) had her dissertation colloquium in Swift Hall on September 12th, 2001. The events of the previous day not only impacted her colloquium, but eventually, also took her teaching career and scholarly interests in directions she never imagined while sitting in Regenstein working her way through Sanskrit declensions. Trained in Buddhist philosophy at the Divinity School, she soon found that every job for which she interviewed required that she create a course on Islam. Since her graduation from the Divinity School, she has taught at two liberal arts colleges, teaching courses that have required her to become more of a generalist than she anticipated. This seminar focused on an undergraduate course on interfaith engagement and religious pluralism that she recently co-taught, and used its syllabus as an entry point into broader questions related to the role of the teacher in the undergraduate religious studies classroom. How, for example, does one negotiate students’ desires to explore “religion” or “spirituality” with one’s own pedagogical desire to foster an atmosphere of academic rigor and critical thinking? What, ultimately, should the goals of an undergraduate religious studies course be?

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. David Tracy delivers the keynote address, “A Troubling Conflict: The Two Selfs in Augustine.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. William Schweiker (University of Chicago) on “The Saint and the Humanities.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Jean Bethke Elshtain (University of Chicago) on “Why Augustine? Why Now?”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The Divinity School marks the University’s 125th anniversary – and the Divinity School’s 150th anniversary – with a panel discussion on the history of the Divinity School, followed by a reception, a dinner, and further remarks after dinner. The panel was introduced by Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature. Nuveen Panel* on Divinity School History: Larry Greenfield, DB'66, AM'70, PhD'78 Martin E. Marty, PhD'56 Daniel Meyer, AM'75, PhD'94 The panel discussion also served as the 2015 John S. Nuveen Lecture. Founded in 1890, the University of Chicago celebrates 125 Years of Inquiry and Impact in 2015. The anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on our history, our community past and present, and the founding principles that continue to guide our direction. The celebration takes place throughout Autumn Quarter 2015 with events held across campus in the divisions, schools, and other units, beginning with the Opening Convocations in September and culminating in the 525th Convocation in December.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. "The War on Drugs – A New Paradigm: Health Not Punishment." Rev. Alexander E. Sharp (MDiv'96), speaking on the work of Clergy for a New Drug Policy. CNDP, of which Rev. Sharp is the founder and executive director, mobilizes clergy nationally to end the War on Drugs and calls for a health not punishment response to drug policy. Rev. Sharp has been working on progressive criminal justice issues for 20 years. He served as the founding executive director of Protestants for the Common Good from 1996 through June 2012 and then as acting executive director of the Community Renewal Society Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Hank Owings, 2nd-year Divinity School student and a Baha'i, brings back our popular 101/Lunch crossover series with "Baha'i 101." "101s" are a no-pressure, no-prior-knowledge-required opportunity for students to learn from fellow students –students present a short, informal introduction to the history and main themes of a particular author or movement they’ve studied and analyzed (e.g. Islamic Law, Yogācāra, Stoicism). There’s always food, drink, laughter, and really basic questions Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Vu Tran, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Department of English and the Committee on Creative Writing. Prof. Tran, who joined the UChicago faculty in 2010, has published his short fiction widely, and is the author of the noir novel “Dragonfish” from which he will be reading today. Tran is a fiction writer whose work thus far is preoccupied with the legacy of the Vietnam War for the Vietnamese who remained in the homeland, the Vietnamese who immigrated to America, and the Americans whose lives have intersected with both; “Dragonfish” concerns an American police officer’s search in Las Vegas for his ex-wife, a Vietnamese refugee Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature, kick off our 2015-2016 Lunch program. Wednesday Lunch is a Divinity School tradition started many decades ago. At noon on Wednesdays when the quarter is in session a delicious vegetarian meal is made in the Swift Hall kitchen by our student chefs and lunch crew. Once the three-course meal has reached dessert each week there is a talk by a faculty member or student from throughout the University, a community member from the greater Chicago area, or a guest from a wider distance.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago) on “Semper agens, semper quietus”: Notes on the History of an Augustinian Theme.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. John Cavadini (University of Notre Dame) on Solidarity and Ideology in Augustine’s City of God.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Willemien Otten (University of Chicago) on “The Open Self: Augustine and the Early Medieval Tradition.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Adrian Peperzak of Loyola University on “Teachers Without and Within.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A conference honoring David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Françoise Meltzer speaking on “Baudelaire, de Maistre, and Hyper-Augustinianism.” Meltzer is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, a professor in the Divinity School and the College, and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.